1. First, SENSE (input); then, report to command center…
First, SENSE (input); then, report to command center… then, ACTION(output)
A sensor is a device that detects and responds to some type of input from the physical environment.
The specific input could be light, heat, motion (i.e. our little Wiimote), moisture, pressure, or any one of a number of other environmental phenomena.
The output is generally a signal that is converted to human “readable” display. This signal can be recruited to turn things on and off based on variable parameters.
THE COOLEST THINGS ABOUT SENSORS:
They are SOCIABLE
When we use them in art, they spark up a conversation with their space, their viewer, even themselves
Depending on how they do this, they let us investigate different conditions in our environment AND to report back to the world about what they found.
They can be poetic, interrogative, funny, but most of all, they invite INTERACTION

2. Here are a few examples of the many different types of sensors:
In a mercury-based glass thermometer, the input is temperature. The liquid contained expands and contracts in response, causing the level to be higher or lower on the marked gauge, which is human-readable. 
Motion sensors in various systems including home security lights, automatic doors and bathroom fixtures typically send out some type of energy, such asmicrowaves, ultrasonic waves or light beams and detect when the flow of energy is interrupted by something entering its path. 
A photosensor detects the presence of visible light, infrared transmission (IR), and/or ultraviolet (UV) energy.
Bottom left: a theremin that uses an IR proximity sensor to detect how far away a hand is, then plays a specific music note for that distance.
The purpose of this project is to build a simple but working theremin that can play the base notes (no sharps or flats) from one octave to another, specifically C4 to C5.
The IR proximity sensor will detect how far away your hand or an object is from it and produce a specifc pitch for that distance.

3. What’s the difference between a switch and a sensor?
a device that can complete a circuit and thereby allow electric current to flow through or disconnect it and stop the current from passing.
i.e., switch something on or off
Sensor
A device that’s used to generate a signal when a certain [change in] condition occurs (e.g. temperature sensor can generate a signal when the temperature gets too hot
Ex: an electronic motion detector contains a motion sensor that transforms the detection of motion into an electric signal… turning on a light or alarm.
Active sensors inject energy (light, microwaves or ultrasonic sound) into the environment in order to detect a change of some sort. Garage door open/close sensor
Passive infrared detectors, PIR, detects changes in infrared energy.
In order to make a sensor that can detect a human being, you need to make the sensor sensitive to the temperature of a human body. Humans, having a skin temperature of about 93 degrees F, radiate infrared energy with a wavelength between 9 and 10 micrometers. Therefore, the sensors are typically sensitive in the range of 8 to 12 micrometers. The infrared light bumps electrons off a substrate, and these electrons can be detected and amplified into a signal.

4. Excelsior 3000 by Ian Haig. Bowel Technology Project, 2001  Does it have to be complicated?

5. NOPE…example: a tilt sensor or tilt switch Note: The wires are hooked into a circuit that includes power and an OUTPUT device such as a siren. ~INPUT: bottle changes orientation in space ~pendulum (+) inside touches copper sleeve (-), makes connection closing a circuit that is hooked up to other devices that can send a signal to activate… ~OUTPUT: alarm sounds, lights beep, sound is switched on when bottle changes orientation and, voila, art can happen.

6. Sensors give feedback. TradeMark G
Sensors give feedback. TradeMark G. likes to put on glasses, a white lab coat, and interactive sewing thimble gloves, in order to produce illegal, copyright-crushing musical performances.
Trademark Gunderson = musician and founder of the band The Evolution Control Committee
culture jammer, equipment designer, software designer, and is known for its copyright-challenging stance, using found sounds to construct sonic and culture jamming mashups
"The Thimbletron." It is made of a pair of gloves with ten thimbles attached at the ends of the fingers, which are then wired to a laptop computer. As the thimbles are touched together, the laptop in turn plays a different sound sample. THESE ARE ON/OFF SWITCHES.
Gunderson has also modified a bread toaster in a similar fashion, with each depression of a lever playing a sample.
Eric Singer (drummer for kiss) deserves special credit in this category. In the early 90s, he hacked the Mattel PowerGlove, a controller for the Nintendo NES, for music. He followed that in 1999 with a Wireless MIDI Glove which sends pressure and bend data for each fingertip.

7. Pamela Z
Pamela Z is a composer/performer and audio artist who works with voice, electronics processes and sampled sound. She uses a BodySynth, a MIDI Controller that uses electrode sensors to translate her physical movements into sound and image installations.

8. silver nanowires are used to develop wearable, multifunctional sensors
these sensors can measure strain, pressure, human touch and bioelectronic signals
an insulating material is sandwiched between two of the stretchable conductors. The two layers have the ability – called “capacitance” – to store electric charges. Pushing, pulling or touching the stretchable conductors changes the capacitance. The sensors work by measuring that change in capacitance.

9. Z uses digital delays devices with found percussion sounds, along with digitally sampled sounds that are triggered with the BodySynth that takes analog from electrode sensors, which she wears on her skin, and this generates MIDI signals, which trigger the sounds Metal Voice (1:35)

10. Interactive Art participates with its environment through sensors
Interactive Art participates with its environment through sensors. Jim Campbell: Portrait of Rebecca With Power Line Fluctuations
She is looking into a light bulb. When the light bulb is not flickering in intensity, the woman is looking out at the viewer (out of the frame). When the light bulb flickers a lot, the woman’s gaze turns inward to the light bulb (into the frame).
The light bulb intensity fluctuations are controlled by measuring and amplifying the power line fluctuations.
For example, if an air conditioner, refrigerator, or powerful light is turned on or off near the work, the light bulb will fluctuate and the woman will respond.

11. Sensors can report from one environment into another.

12. Jim Campbell : Untitled For The Sun
LED number display, light sensor, custom electronics. This work is a clock that displays time as a percentage of the passing day.
A wire from an LED display is connected to a solar cell or light sensor on the top of the building, which measures the light from the sun.
(The results are passed to custom electronics where the day/night durations are used to phase the work to the rhythms of the sun.)
Beginning at at sunrise, the five-digit display shows the percentage of daylight already spent, reaching at sunset. Then it begins again, counting upward into the night toward the dawn, reading percent at sunrise.

13. Jim Campbell Photo of My Mother
Custom electronics, glass, photograph, LCD material, 71 x 15 x 6 inches.
A photograph of my mother slowly transforms from foggy to clear at the rate of My Breath as digitally recorded for one hour, as though I am breathing on the glass in front of the photograph.

14. Sensors can invite viewer interaction

15. Acupuncture For Temporal Fruit Interactive Sculpture, March 27, May 31, Jennifer Hall: Artist, Project Lead Marc LoCascio: Engineer Blyth Hazen: Artist, Fabrication Kyle Jarger : Kyleboard Design
"Acupuncture for Temporal Fruit is comprised of twelve identical units, suspended from the gallery ceiling.
Each computer-assisted unit contains a tomato (or tomatoes), electric motors, acupuncture needles, and sonar devices.
NOTICE: COLLABORATIVE TEAM!

16. “The sonar devices detect your presence at various locations in the gallery. When you trigger the sonar, the electric motors activate the needles which pierce the ripe flesh of the fruit. These conflicting notions are further complicated by the direct complicity of museum visitors, whose presence and choice of locations within the gallery activate a process fraught with technological anxiety."
Here, an instrument of healing (acupuncture) is rendered as something sinister, and this calls to mind many of the ironies of contemporary health care.

17. The Art Invites the Viewer to Participate in Changing Its State “The Sillytone Squish Factory” a collaboration between Sasha Leitman, Geoffrey Morris, Marina Kassianidou and Julian Wass 2004
Made out of a single casting of silicon, the two eyes function as buttons and the two ears can be moved like joysticks or pulled and squeezed.
The sensing ears were created using pressure sensitive resistors which allow continuous detection of the user interaction.
L handle creates sound, R handle modifies it. Pushing forward is a major chord, pulling back is a minor chord, also augmented and diminished. Buttons can toggle thru choices.

18. Sensors encourage interaction / play / participation “Playsoundground” by Sasha Leitman and Michael St. Clair
The PlaySoundGround is an adult-sized sound-producing playground. Sensors embedded in a teeter-totter, swing set and merry-go-round register users movements and a computer generates sound in real-time based on those movements.
The teeter-totter, merry-go-round, and swings are electronic musical instruments.
Sensors in them allow people to create digital music by playing on them.
The furniture is all scaled to be roughly the same size relative to an adult’s body that a typical playground would be relative to a child’s body.

19. …creates links between the senses, calling the distinctions between aural and kinesthetic experience into question
“….lets people cooperatively explore a wide space of musical gestures
…connections between physical play and musical play

20. Sensors can manipulate the viewer

21. CARA-ANN SIMPSON Geodesic Sound Helmets, Blue Oyster Art Project Space, Dunedin, NZ A series of interactive and immersive personal sound environments. The audio within the helmets are compositions based on aural geography of specific locations. Participant's are able to control the audio by changing their breathing patterns and moving their head and shoulders within the object.

22. Amy Young’s Rearming the Spineless Opuntia 1999
designed to protect a genetically engineered spineless Opuntia cactus.
When this work is approached, the sensors trigger motors to control and close metal armor with sharp spikes, which serves to re-arm a cactus that has been genetically engineered through cloning and micro propagation technologies to no longer have its original spine defense-mechanism, against those who eat them.
Microcontrollers are small programmable computers with memory processors and are usually detachable from the keyboards and monitors we use to program them.
The cactus inside is both interactive with people and protected from them.
Amy Youngs employed electronic ultrasonic sensors,( a Parallax Basic Stamp 2 microcontroller, a motor, copper, steel, aluminum, and rubber) to complete this work.
This sculpture embodies Amy Youngs’ impulse to protect a vulnerable and human-engineered creation, but it also reveals the folly of protection in its heavy reliance on technology. It also raises issues of how we can sometimes introduce unexpected consequences into genetic engineering, where changing one creature or plant can potentially have a host of effects on other living things.

23. David Fried “Self Organizing Still Life – SOS “
outdoor sculpture installation / brussels

24. David Bowen sonar drawing device by David Bowen
David Bowen’s sonar drawing device uses a sonar detector to take a distance reading of a space, the people and objects within it.
The device renders a circular wax crayon drawing based on the information the sonar distance sensor gathers.
Each drawing it renders is specific to a particular space and the activity that takes place within it.

25. follow flies fly tweet movie
fly tweet This device sends twitter messages based on the activities of a collection of houseflies. The flies live inside an acrylic sphere along with a computer keyboard. As the flies move and interact inside their home, they fly over the keys on the keyboard. These movements are collected in real-time via video.
When a particular key is triggered by the flies, the key’s corresponding character is entered into a twitter text box.
When 140 characters are reached or the flies trigger the “enter” key, the message containing the accumulated characters is tweeted.
Thus live twitter messages are perpetually sent in real-time based on the simple movements of the community of houseflies.
These constantly accumulating messages appear as records of random activity within the larger sphere of social media and networking.
Using the COMMON in the service of high tech commentary and critique.

26. Telematics is the science and study of exploring the actual and philosophical issues of sensing and acting at a distance using computers, networks, and feedback sensors. 
CRITIQUE of our dependence on technology.
The artists/scientists Ken Goldberg, Eric Paulos, Chris Myers, and Mat Fogarty are studying network-based systems that permit online users to experience live and remote environments such as a rainforests, political rallies, and a biotechnology lab from a distance.
They have created a work called the Tele-Actor, 2004 which is a human with cameras and microphones who is connected to a wireless digital network.
Viewers who log onto the web site can view video and audio television of this remote actor, and he/she receives a stream of votes on how and where to go in the environment. (this was invented before Google Glass)
They have developed a "Spatial Dynamic Voting" (SDV) interface, which allows the group dynamics of all the participants on the web to vote on the future direction of the teleactor.
This work questions the idea of individual agency, and subsumes the actor to the will of the collective interacting on the site at any one time.
Tela-Actor: by Ken Goldberg, Eric Paulos, Chris Myers, and Mat Fogarty Tele-Actor Photo by Bart Nagel

27. Bjoern Schuelke Aerophon #2, 2003
Alloy, plywood, motors, sensor, organpipe, paint
13 x 18 x 12“ / 140 x 120 x 95 cm
view quicktime 0.7MB
Aerophon #2 features a leathery bagpipe-like cavity that appears to breathe. Inflating with air, the central body of the sculpture opens and closes cyclically by releasing hollow long notes, only to refill once more. Positioned as if it were part of a mysterious galactic research station, this sculpture is activated by viewers and resembles devices used in B-movie depictions of lunar landings and terrestrial exploration.
the theme of an absurd machine is key in Schuelke's work
Schuelke's active sculptures question the way in which we interact with modern technology: on entering the installation site, the audience becomes part of the 'system' as the works (some freestanding, others suspended) monitor or react to the human element. (bitforms)
Bjoern Schuelke pursues a creative style that is equally influenced by modern abstraction and instruments of scientific measurement.
The slow deliberate movements in his sculptures spatially consider mass and weight of form. Also influenced by the Dadaist tradition and Jean Tinguely, the theme of an absurd machine is key in Schuelke's work.
Playfully transforming live spatial energy into active responses, his objects experiment with solar panels, infrared surveillance, and propelled wind power.
Many of his larger kinetic sculptures combine elements of surveillance technologies, robotics, interactive video and sound.

28. Supersonic #1, 2007 Interactive sonic wall object
Theremin, digital delay, 9' inch subwoofer, motion sensor, fiberglass, wood, car paint
L x W x H (cm) 82 x 40 x 40
Supersonic #1, 2007

29. Orgamat by Bjoern Schuelke
Bjoern Schulke has created an organ that uses photo resistors hooked up to the surface of a TV screen to sense light and trigger the organ to play.
As the photo resistors, are exposed to different content on the screen, they are activated or not activated, which causes relays to switch fan motors on and off and blow air through the pipes.
The sound of the organ is mixed naturally with the sound coming from the TV, which creates a very humorous collage of sounds and pokes fun at the dramatic content you see streaming through the TV tube.

30. Orgamat by Bjoern Schuelke, 2003 170 x 90 x 120cm.
The work is constructed with white fiberglass over plywood, and an important component of the work is a large couch (not shown), built in the same style of the organ, and a TV remote that allows the viewer to switch the channel and therefore change the sound that will be created by the piece.

31. Faradays Garden by Perry Hoberman. 1990-1999
Michael Faraday, the inventor of the AC motor, which powers most of these devices to whir, chop and spin. The sonic environment is wonderful.
The interface for this work as direct pressure sensitive mats that would switch on the AC when you would pass. The simple and direct interface associated with the sound was most effective. SWITCHES

32. Schuelke's Luftguitarre series Activated by the approach of visitors, a minimal pluck of a singular steel cord results from Schuelke's elaborate and delicate construction of solar panels, wood, a motion sensor and propeller.
sculptures are human in scale and resemble musical stringed instruments such as the banjo, violin and contrabass. Floating mid-air, the effortless rotation of these sculptures conjures a familiar echo of explosive chords ringing in a live concert.

33. Idiophon #2, 2011 brass, steel, lead, wood, splash, circuit, motor, automotive paint, solar cell x 9.45 x 3.94"

34. brainstorming and rough sketches
Oblique Strategies ~ Text by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt
Jim Campbell's formula for computer art
Interactive Electronics for Artists and Inventors (chapter 14) from our Virtual Gallery